


Sons of Love and War

by LucyLovecraft



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Angst, Bohun POV is the most dramatic POV, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Feelings, Feelings Realization, M/M, One Shot, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 07:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13899267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: Jurko Bohun lives for war and nothing else, or so he thinks. One encounter teaches him better.





	Sons of Love and War

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tumblr user katakulio for the angst/fluff prompt “I’ve got you”.
> 
> These are some incompetent bandits because anyone with half a brain would do archery from a distance rather than take people at close quarters, but since idiots attack in melee all the time in the canon maybe it’s just generally pretty shambolic out there (with the possible exception of everything in a five-foot radius of Pan Michał).
> 
> Regardless, I had to make Bohun even more of a goddam evil steppe Gary Stu than usual in order to make the combat even slightly believable.

Half a second before the first arrow flew, Bohun’s head shot up. It was not enough time for him to speak or draw, but his heart heard the call to war.

In the instant the Tartar loosed his shaft, he saw his target’s eager, half-formed smile and a glimpse of so dreadful a delight that his arrow flew wild as he released it.  
  
The raiders swarmed out of the trees, running towards the two riders. Jan swore and drew his sword, spurring to meet them.  
  
The Pole’s habitual battle cry of “Jeremi! Jeremi!” drove fear into their opponents like a physical blow. Bohun loathed that cry, but he watched its effect with cruel satisfaction.  
  
He himself needed no words of war; violence was already in his very bone and breath, and all who saw him knew it. The wild powers that shaped him had made him for this: as the hawk stoops, as the wolf hunts, so Jurko Bohun was made for battle.

Glinting steel struck sparks in his soul and he kindled and caught fire: breath, hoofbeats, blood roaring in his ears, and the heavy sabre in his hand. He outpaced Jan as the wild steppe strain of his horse’s breed showed. More than that, the mount had a temperament to suit Bohun’s own, and the beast flew forward with its hooves flashing out towards the shouting humans.

The first Tartar fell to Bohun’s sword. The second died screaming under the plunging hooves of his horse. The third perished as Jan joined him. The battle began and Bohun gave himself up to it like a mystic.

War was his mother, and it was sure that the red hag loved her dreadful child—he knew it by the gifts she gave him.  
  
Across the way Bohun caught the flash of Jan’s grin as he executed an efficient, deadly little disengage-riposte. Triumph blazed in his eyes, and Jurko recognised the constrained delight in every movement. The smile turned back to a grimace of effort as the next attacker came shrieking in, but even in the face of death, Bohun could feel the glow of Jan’s being, like the warmth from a fire. Jan fought as he lived: shining bright, more vivid and beautiful than love itself.  
  
Through his own bloody ecstasy, Bohun saw another man swing at him, screaming in Tartar, and Bohun wheeled to meet him.  
  
The scent of blood was rich and heavy in the air. Violence turned his body to molten steel. He was speed and fury and a shining blade. Rage threw him against the gates of eternity, and in the howling fury he became death’s own instrument. There would be war, on and on until the end of days, and he would be deathless as death itself.  
  
God, Bohun thought, if he could fight by Jan’s side like this every day, he would live forever.  
  
The music was there, as it always was. He could feel it all around them—Jan, himself, the horses, the men—carrying them through the deadly dance. It brought his opponents to him, and he went joyously to meet them. They wanted to kill him, and he hated them for it, for trying to take his own life from him in this most exultant of moments. He loved them for it, too, because never was he so in love with life than when he felt it as a fragile, fluttering thing in his chest with all the world assailing it. Fury, not love, had taught Bohun his first song, and both heart and hand knew every measure.  
  
Suddenly, through the symphony, he sensed it: something was wrong. He knew it before he could even put a name to the chill that touched his heart.  
  
Then Jan’s voice cried out in pain, and all the colours in Bohun’s world seemed to flicker.  
  
With the dreadful, inexorable slowness of nightmare Bohun saw Jan reel back with the arrow standing in his chest. Pure shock showed on his face in the instant before the pain hit. Jan’s horse looked wild as the guiding hand and body went slack. It reared up to strike out at the bandits who cut at it, and Jan toppled backwards from the saddle.  
  
The world’s colour faded. The song ended. The fire fell to ash.  
  
Bohun did not stop to think.  
  
There was a man between him and Jan. He brought the man down.  
  
Another man blocked his path, hacking at Bohun with—it did not matter what he held. Bohun leant out from the saddle and struck.  
  
Another Tartar was stepping up to Jan, raising a sword. Beyond them both was the archer.  
  
_The archer:_ the one who had shot Jan. The one who who was even now nocking another arrow.  
  
The Cossack came in low and hacked the nearer man down.  
  
He rode on, charging towards the archer. He met the man’s eyes as the Tartar drew to the ear and fixed his aim on Bohun. At the last instant Bohun hurled himself from the saddle, hearing the deadly hiss of the arrow as it passed. In a feat possible only because he did not stop to think of it, he threw away his sword as he fell. He landed hard on his shoulder and rolled. Then he was on his feet, sprinting towards the archer. Drawing his dagger from his belt as he ran, Bohun sprang and plunged it with a howl into the archer’s breast.  
  
When the man fell, Bohun wheeled round.  
  
The rest were running, and that was all that mattered.  
  
Jan was on his knees, hand clutching at the shaft lodged in his chest. A darker red was spreading against the red of his _kontusz_.  
  
The other man’s eyes were wild, confused, looking now from the arrow in his chest and then to the clearing, as if he could not quite understand what had happened.  
  
“Don’t move!” Bohun cried, lunging towards his lover. The earth over which he’d flown only a few moments before came rising up to meet him like a punishment. Though he ran over the muddy ground, it seemed he must be crawling up some terrible slope. He had always revelled in his own swift speed, but now his limbs were turned to lead.  
  
“Jurko?”  
  
He reached Jan just in time to catch him as he swayed.  
  
“Jan,” he gasped, and could barely recognise the terrible voice that had spoken as his own.  
  
The other man reached for him instinctively, then cried out as the movement tore the muscles around the embedded arrowhead.  
  
“Stop!” Bohun said, putting out a desperate hand to restrain him. “Stop, Jan!”  
  
“This feels… rather bad.” He essayed a smile that Bohun knew was for his sake.  
  
“No, no!” he cried. “Don’t talk nonsense!”  
  
“Where are the bandits?” Jan kept glancing round, bewildered with shock.  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“You don’t know?”  
  
How could he explain? Jan was expecting him to think like a colonel, like a soldier: _“How many of the enemy were left and where were they headed? How many reinforcements might there be?”_

Jan did not understand that it did not matter how many bandits lurked in the woods.

It was all very simple: if they came back, Bohun would kill them all. If Jan died, Bohun would hunt them down one by one, tracking them to the ends of the earth. He would make sure that every last man died in agony so that they might, in the midst of their own petty perdition, glimpse the torment of Bohun’s soul. Then he would ride through the world with fire and steel, until every living being felt his pain.

He was no longer accustomed to being alone, and so Bohun resolved that he should not be alone in his despair.  
  
“No, Jurko,” Jan said softly.  
  
The red rage drained from him. Jan’s breath was laboured. He had to _do_ something.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Bohun said, apologising both for what he had done and for what he was about to do.

Laying Jan carefully down on the earth, he knelt with his knees on Jan’s chest on either side of the arrow, to keep him from moving and worsening the damage. Then he seized the shaft of the arrow in his hands. Jan’s muffled cry cut through Bohun’s very soul, but Bohun made himself do what was necessary. With an effort he snapped the arrow shaft as close to the body as he could manage.  
  
Stripping Jan to the waist, Bohun saw with dizzying relief that the arrow had missed the great arteries of the shoulder, but the wound was deep. From the ragged hole in the fabric, some of the  _kontusz_ and tunic must be inside the wound. That might conceivably be to their advantage: he thought it could perhaps staunch the blood.  
  
“Do you think you can ride?” Bohun asked. He noticed only now that his hands were coated with other men’s blood, the sleeves of his own _kontusz_ soaked with red to the shoulder.  
  
“I don’t think I have much choice,” Jan said. He was still trying to smile, and worst of all, he seemed to mean it. Even now, Jan shone with that inner brightness.  
  
“No,” Bohun said utterly overcome. “No, you don’t.”  
  
Together they staggered back to Bohun’s horse. Bohun helped Jan into the saddle, almost deranged by Jan’s haggard, drawn expression as he tried to hide how it pained him.  
  
Tying the reins of Jan’s horse to his saddle, Bohun mounted behind him. They began to ride at as fast a pace as Bohun dared, though each strike of his horse’s hooves made Jan’s whole body tense with pain. The village was not far, but nightfall was nearer still.  
  
This, thought Bohun, was why he had resisted love’s entrapments. He’d _known_ this would happen. All that wealth of joy and peace had been bought on credit against this day. Now he was being called to pay, and he did not think he could be strong enough withstand it.  
  
“Stop,” Jan said. He was facing forward, but he had known or guessed whither Bohun’s mind had tended without even seeing his face.  
  
“I can’t lose you,” Bohun whispered, bending to rest his forehead against Jan’s back. The wool was soft, warm with the scent of Jan’s body. “I can’t.”  
  
“You won’t. It’s just one wound, Jurko.” Bohun’s arm was around his waist, with his palm pressed against Jan’s chest. Gently, Jan placed one cold hand over Bohun’s.  
  
“It will be all right,” Jan said. “I’ve got you.”

They rode on into the dusk in silence, Jan never taking his hand from Bohun’s.

 

* * *

 

That night, as he watched the slow rise and fall of Jan’s chest as he slept, exhausted but safe, Bohun thought that he had not fully understood Jan Skrzetuski until that day.

 _“It will be all right,”_ Jan had said, consoling him as though Bohun were wounded, not he. And what he had said might even be possible; even for Bohun, it might yet be possible.

Bohun looked at Jan, terror and wonder warring within him. Neither seemed to triumph, but perhaps it did not matter. That he found no answers for what he felt had seldom troubled him: it mattered only that he _felt._ Yet never before had he felt so much, or so keenly.

Moved by instinct and sudden impulse, he dropped to his knees by Jan’s bedside. Bohun took Jan’s hand, feeling the rough scrape of a swordsman’s callouses under his fingers. Jan slept on, undisturbed, and Bohun stared at the sleeping face, trying to see what it was in Jan that held him so.

 _“I’ve got you,"_  Jan had said, and it was true. Bohun did not know how or why, nor did he fully understand what those words meant, but that night he finally knew them to be true.

**Author's Note:**

> Major credit due to am_fae for her insight into Jan. It would be impossible to write Bohun in love if I didn't have her helping me understand whom it is Bohun loves.
> 
> The line about love and present happiness being eventually paid for with sorrow was essentially cribbed from “Children of God” by Mary Doria Russell.


End file.
